Mr. Brendan McGrath:

I am sure Mr. Kelly can elaborate on this but the cost of the Galway city ring road is of the order of €650 million. The Galway transport strategy is subject to a lot of further detailed work but the estimated cost to deliver it as drafted is somewhere in the ballpark of €250 million to €300 million. If the Oireachtas gives us €300 million, we can solve and implement what is in the strategy. The Galway transport strategy has a 20-year horizon with significant front-loading in the first ten years and a huge amount of work targeted for years one to five. I need a guarantee of money on a multiannual basis which will permit us to put the resources in place. The programme we are following with the NTA has been to line up the ducks on the various projects which make up the totality of the Galway transport strategy, organising and getting through the planning processes to have the fundamental heavy lifting done in so far as possible by the end of 2018. For example, the Galway city centre transport management plan, which is one aspect of the Galway transport strategy, probably requires between 25 and 30 individual projects rolled out to make it happen. Some are short term, some are medium term and some are long term. Some of them cannot be implemented until the Galway city ring road is in place. As Mr. Uinsinn Finn pointed out, the ring road is still needed even if the Galway transport strategy is implemented in full. It is an absolute must and a sine qua non.

The city centre transport management plan involves many difficult decisions. It is radical, innovative and requires new thinking. It will mean changing traffic flows at junctions, changing junctions, eliminating on-street parking and providing traffic links across the city prioritising bus, cycle and pedestrian traffic within the city core. It means approaching it in a fundamentally different way from the way things are approached now. The real challenge will come when we put a proposal on the table to change the traffic flow on a particular street to something fundamentally different, remove on-street car parking, change one-way systems and take traffic off some streets completely, giving them over completely to cyclists and pedestrians. There is a win-win if we succeed in implementing the Galway transport strategy as we will also succeed in fundamentally enhancing the public realm across Galway city. We will give the city back to its citizens and we will not be prioritising the car.

A number of members referred to the park and ride system. There are a number of parallel pieces here that are in progress and which can and will happen in tandem. The park and ride network is a fundamental element but I can only go out and buy land for park and ride facilities if funding guarantees are in place. The NTA can only give me that money if it has guarantees in turn. We need somewhere between €950 million and €1 billion to solve Galway's traffic problems. If I have that guarantee, I can, of course, have a dedicated head of traffic. The NTA has worked exceptionally closely with us, as has TII. The NTA has bolstered our resources, including by providing us with additional staff and, along with TII, dedicating staff within their own organisations to work on specific Galway projects. They are funding a range of consultancies across the city working on the different elements of the project. A great deal is happening. However, I guarantee the committee that as soon as we put the Galway city centre management plan into the public domain, initially by way of a non-statutory consultation and thereafter through the statutory consultation process and probably a Part X process, which possibly means it going into An Bord Pleanála, it will upset a lot of people, no more than with the Kirwan roundabout. People will not be able to continue to do things the way they are being done now. However, I can state categorically that doing nothing on traffic and transport in Galway is not an option. Waiting ad infinitumto solve it is not an option either.

To achieve Galway's potential and allow it to act as the gateway capital to the west of Ireland and as an economic and entrepreneurial leader, leveraging the value of the world-class medical technology cluster in the city, the university, GMIT, and the hospital, we have to stop the city being choked. People taking hours and hours to get out of work is not acceptable. People have no guarantee as to their journey time. One day a journey takes ten minutes whereas the next it takes an hour. We met Mr. Tony Neary and the Parkmore group yesterday and we are absolutely conscious of the frustration of his and the other companies in Parkmore. What is probably not recognised, however, is that the university and the hospital are equally large generators of traffic. In fact, they probably generate more traffic than the Parkmore area. The vast majority of journeys into Parkmore currently involve single-occupancy cars. Mr. Finn will correct me if I am wrong, but it is of the order to 80% to 83% of those journeys. We have to change the mindset. We have to bring about the modal shift.

Nothing in the Galway transport strategy rules out a light rail system for Galway down the road. At the moment, however, we can implement and deliver bus-based solutions if we have a guarantee of resources. For example, if I get €30 million, I can provide a bus lane on both sides of the Old Dublin Road, which links to Doughiska. That is what we are talking about. The Tuam Road bus corridor requires bold decisions but the only way it can work, fundamentally, probably requires us to eliminate the right turn into Ballybrit. People will not like me saying that. People do not want to hear it. I understand the concerns of business, but radical changes in thinking are required to deliver these solutions. We now have the strategy in place.

A hell of a lot of work went in. It is based on evidence and facts. The various organisations such as Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, the National Transport Authority, NTA, the city council and the county council have signed up to say this is the way forward and the solution. I am sure Mr. Kelly will come in on this. When the Galway city ring road is submitted to An Bord Pleanála, it is hoped in April, if we end up with a legal challenge à laAthenry, and it is open to legal challenge, our timelines at the moment are based on a reasonable period in which the board will deal with it, so if such a challenge were to take two, three or four years, the completion date for the city ring road would not be 2024 but beyond that.

We have fundamentally said to our colleagues in Parkmore that the ultimate solution to Parkmore is the city ring road. Dedicated access to the Parkmore area is provided through the city ring road, which we can outline if the committee wants. If the city ring road could be got through planning and there was not a court challenge, we have had a discussion with TII about bringing forward the Parkmore piece as enabling works to facilitate the area. It could be fast-tracked. The key piece with the city ring road is getting it through An Bord Pleanála and dealing with the courts system, should the need arise.